An Introduction to the Largest Interconnected Machine on Earth

The Department of Energy released a new, by-way-of-introduction report on The Grid, which as you can read below, can “appropriately” be called “an ecosystem.”

Our century-old power grid is the largest interconnected machine on Earth, so massively complex and inextricably linked to human involvement and endeavor that it has alternately (and appropriately) been called an ecosystem. It consists of more than 9,200 electric generating units with more than 1,000,000 megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines.

Via > Greenbiz

Image: flickr/sjalex

 

Wind Power Fiction from the 1911 New York Times

The April 30, 1911 edition of The New York Times featured a wonderful piece on the creation of J.G. Childs’ “wind turbine electrical plant,” which tells a delightful fairy tale about what wind power would do for the rural farm:

“Here are some of its possibilities on a farm,” we read:

It pumps all the water used upon the place and feeds an artificial stream and lake. The owner is relied of that chief dread that besets the country resident. He goes to bed with the comfortable assurance that should fire break out his hydrants will furnish ample streams of water driven by electrical force.

All the buildings are lighted by electricity, the plant running 100 or more 16-candle-power lamps if necessary. All parts of the house are connected by telephone, and communication with the stables, the boathouse, or the garage is readily secured through the same medium.

In the winter the residence and outbuildings are heated by electricity, and in the summer cooled by electric fans. One needs to have had experience of an electric cooking range to appreciate all the benefits. It is the simplest and least troublesome arrangement imaginable. All that is necessary is to move a switch and the current does the rest. The food is not only cooked more precisely but also more quickly than by any other process…

It is possible also to arrange so the carpets are cleaned by the vacuum process and the furniture dusted by suction. The housekeeper uses power from the same source to run her sewing machine and in the nursery it is employed to operate the youngsters’ mechanical toys…

The owner of the place uses an electric motor car because it is free from noise, dirt, and odor but more than everything else, he gets an unlimited quantity of electricity free and without trouble. His machine is always ready for immediate use and no appreciable time or trouble is expended in keeping it in that condition. When it comes in from a trip it is run into the garage, and recharged by the wind-plant, either directly from the generator or from the storage battery.

Life in the country will be made immeasurably more attractive by the wind turbine.

Where did this vision come from? It’s unsourced, as if the writer’s imagination saw a future utopia and reported on it. Unfortunately, nothing like this has really ever come to pass, although I dare say it seems a lot like the corporate plan for the Boulder Smart Grid City.  Only 97 years late.

Image: An electric car (left) next to a gasoline powered car (right) in Denver. Sometime between 1910 and 1920. Caption at the Library of Congress: An unidentified woman rides in an electric automobile, Julia Rhoads and Hazel Ladora Gates ride in a gas powered automobile, Denver, Colorado. The women wear fur stoles over their outfits and elaborate hats.

 

The Paradise Within the Reach of All Men, Without Labour, by Powers of Nature and Machinery

Now, friends, this is what I call an economic stimulus plan! John Adolphus Etzler, writing in 1836 , recommended a strict diet of solar, tidal, and wind power — and if we followed his recommendations, we’d end up with, well, you know, utopia:

I promise to show the means for creating a paradise within ten years, where every thing desirable for human life may be had for every man in superabundance, without labour, without pay; where the whole face of nature is changed into the most beautiful form of which it be capable; where man maj live in the most magnificent palaces, in all imaginable refinements of luxury, in the most delightful gardens; where he may accomplish, without his labour, in one year more than hitherto could be done in thousands of years; he may level mountains, sink valleys, create lakes, drain lakes and swamps, intersect every where the land with beautiful canals, with roads for transporting heavy loads of many thousand tons, and for travelling 1000 miles in twenty-four hours; he may cover the ocean with floating islands moveable in any desired direction with immense power and celerity, in perfect security and in all comforts and luxury, bearing gardens, palaces, with thousands of families, provided with rivulets of sweet water; he may explore the interior of the globe, travel from pole to pole in a. fortnight; he may provide himself with means unheard of yet, for increasing his knowledge of the world, and so his intelligence; he may lead a life of continual happiness, of enjoyments unknown yet; he may free himself.

Not even Barack has that much hope for green renewal. Although, it is rather impressive that it turns out that we can do all of the stuff that he suggested.

From: The Paradise Within the Reach of All Men, Without Labour, by Powers of Nature and Machinery: An Address to All Intelligent Men by John Adolphus Etzler

Image: A big turbine and a little barn. flickr/tlindenbaum

 

he who unites the paranormal and the solar

Charles Greeley Abbott wasn’t any ordinary head of the Smithsonian Insitute. One of the world’s preeminent astrophysicists and a specialist in all things sun,  he invented one of the first solar cookers, seen above. And he happened to believe in paranormal phenomenon. All around, he must have been a pretty interesting guy, particularly after a few drinks.

Abbott wrote a book in 1938, while director of the Smithsonian, in which he ran down the state of sun science, The Sun and the Welfare of Man. The fascinating thing about this work is that it’s a scientific work about observing and measuring — spots, strength, variability, etc — that happens to include a chapter about “Harnessing the Sun.” It’s hard to imagine an astrophysicist just kind of dropping solar machines into the center of his book, but that’s what Abbott did. And along the way he provided a decently comprehensive history of early solar machines, courtesy of a many-page long quotation from A.S.E Ackerman, first published on US soil in the 1915 Smithsonian Report.

One rarely mentioned project is pictured below.

Here’s what Ackerman had to say about this very, very early solor motor:

A.G. Eneas, in the United States, used the popular truncated, cone-shaped reflector, collecting about 700 square feet of solar radiation. The weight of the reflector was 8,300 pounds.

The boiler was formed of two concentric steel tubes, the two together being incased in two glass tubes with a air space between them and another air space between the inner glass one and the outer steel tube. The water circulated up between the inner and outer steel tubes and down the inner tube. The boiler was placed at the axis of the cone. Its length was 13 feet 6 inche, its water capacity 834 pounds, and steam space 8 cubic feet. Hence the diameter of the outer tube appears to have been 1 foot 2 inches and the concentration of radiation 13.4; i.e. 13.4 square feet of sunshine were concentrated on each square foot of the external surface of the boiler…

The sun-power plant known as the Pasadena one was described and illustrated in the August, 1901, issue of Cassier’s Magazine by Prof. R.H. Thurston and on page 103 of the Railway and Engineering review of February 23, 1901. It is stated to have been designed by, and erected at hte expense of, ‘a party of Boston inventors whose names have not been made public.” …

‘According to newspaper accounts the all day average work performed by the engine is 1,400 gallons of water lifted 12 feet per minute, which is at a rate of 4 horsepower’ …

The Pasadena plant is said to have cost 1,000 pounds and Willsie, writing of it in 190, says it was the “largest and strongest of the mirror type of solar motor ever built.”

Image: Abbot, Charles Greeley. The sun and the welfare of man. (Smithsonian Scientific Series, Volume 2)
New York: Smithsonian institution series, inc., 1938. Scanned by the University of Wisconsin library.

 

the scholarly history of american energy and the corporate futures of Big Oil

Trolling for resources on the first oil boom/bust, I came across a class historian of technology, Peter Shulman (now at Case Western), taught at MIT called “Energy and Environment in America: 1750-2005.”

The syllabus is a brilliant resource for history of energy and industrialization fans. Here are the books are articles I culled from the list:

• The Social Shaping of Technology, edited by Milton Keynes and Judy Wajcman
  This appears to be very influential, cited over 800 times. Here’s a quick (in academic circles) overview of the research and literature surrounding the social shaping of technology [pdf].
• Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology 1880-1940, David Nye
  “Using Muncie, Indiana, as a touchstone, David Nye explores how electricity seeped into and redefined American culture.”
• Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture, Deborah Fitzgerald
  A bonus for this title — the first 40 or so pages in PDF courtesy of Yale University Press
• Petrolia: The Landscape of America’s First Oil Boom by Brian Black
  “Against the background of the growing demand for petroleum throughout and immediately following the Civil War, Black describes Oil Creek Valley’s descent into environmental hell.”
• The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism, Adam Rome
  “the first scholarly history of efforts to reduce the environmental costs of suburban development in the United States”
• Jimmy Carter and the Energy Crisis of the 1970s, Daniel Horowitz
  “Through carefully selected documents that bring together the high-level White House decision-making process and the national conversation about energy, Daniel Horowitz helps students understand both the crises of the 1970s and the continuing relationship between American economic and foreign policy.”

And a special note on a text included in Shulman’s class, Corporate Futures: The Diffusion of the Culturally Sensitive Corporate Form, edited by George Marcus.

Perhaps you’re not aware of it, but Shell, Chevron, and the rest of the Big Oil companies put out scenarios about the future of energy that you can only call science fiction. They even give the divergent future worlds they describe catchy, one-word names — Scramble, Blueprint — as if they were a restaurant you might trek across town to visit after glimpsing it through the window of a cab on a foggy night. Shell’s latest visions come with videos and flash animations. One video, transcript here [doc], seems to be talking about our real world:

In the Scramble world, events outpace actions. Security of energy supply and fears of losing economic ground shape decision-making. For the next 10 years, people from all walks of life join in the debate about energy and climate change. But no one seems truly wedded to action on a large scale. Governments generally choose solutions that are politically straightforward, and local. They prefer to rely on indigenous energy sources.  So coal makes a big come-back in some regions, despite its higher emissions… Drivers stay with liquid fuels. With oil becoming harder to find and produce, biofuel use grows rapidly. In the Scramble world, no one is prepared to change the status quo. Dealing with today’s problem takes priority. By the 2020s, life has become volatile and uncertain.  Energy availability is often tight.  Severe weather events are blamed on a lack of previous action on climate change.

But there’s hope. We do not have to take that nasty path, which might end up with consumers getting angry about the whole Big Oil thing. Instead, we can manage and plan our way out of the energy mess. All we need is, is… a Blueprint. It’s improbable story sounds like Barack:

The world of Blueprints shows what can happen when actions outpace events. Groups of seemingly disconnected people in California – venture capitalists, farmers, politicians – collaborate around opportunities for profitable action on climate change.Publics put international pressure on governments for change.  Smart investments in modern facilities improve air pollution, energy efficiency, and greenhouse gas emissions all at the same time. This isn’t a sudden outbreak of altruism.  It’s a recognition of shared interests, new opportunities for profitable business, and the benefits of taking action before it’s forced by circumstances. In the world of Blueprints, local actions spread and join up – like the C40 megacities pact of mayors and others, experimenting and sharing good practices around carbon emissions, transport and energy efficiency.

And of course the good world is what Shell wants. Because what’s good for the world is good for Shell, and vice versa. Of course.

In any case, these scenarios have a long and fascinating history, requiring, as they do, the application of the principles of fiction. Here’s a chapter from Corporate Futures that deals with the writing and editing of a set of Shell scenarios [pdf]. It’s structured as a Q&A between Betty Sue Flowers, a former English professor (and now director of LBJ’s library) who wrote the 1992 scenarios, and Robbie Davis-Floyd, a cultural anthropologist at UT-Austin, who share a “mutual fascination with myth.”

Flowers described Shell’s reasoning for making up the future ahead of time:

And they said, well, it’s actually not only false to have straight-line forecasting, but it’s dangerous because you can be lulled into thinking you do know the future, that you have the story for the future, and that the future is the past, put into the future. So what they decided to do instead was to build self-conscious stories, that is, they would call them “stories,” and to build two of them, equally persuasive, based on the same statistical beginning point and statistically told, that is, told in economic language, for thirty years into the future. They would spend three years putting this together with a team of twenty or so from all over the world, and then they’d spend the next year disseminating them in workshops around the world, so that what you got was a common culture based on not a story about the future but two stories about the future.

Seems a bit like a stall tactic, huh? Or at the least a bit of Sophistry, even if it was sophisticated and filled with charts and tables and good faith. What’s really interesting about this is that Shell finally got around to picking a scenario for the first time this year.

Blueprint it is, from now on.

But it being a social media heavy world now, and all 2.0 and stuff, Chevron one-upped Shell and came out with Energyville, a SimCity game designed to teach you how hard it is to power the world. I’m sure a post-doc somewhere is out there analyzing it as literature, and rightly so.

Sometimes, when I went to get deep on something, I just open up the log-in screen and listen to the piano-and-string heavy musical loop over and over. The problem is that I see an important event — someone dying/living, a mother holding a baby for the first time, a son coming of age — and then the loop ends and the vision fades, sometimes before I even recognize the faces of the people.

The game is all part of Chevron’s advertising campaign: Will You Join Us? This morning, I saw a San Francisco bus idling, fully-encased in the slogan.